The network icon on the taskbar helps you to identify whether you network access or not. This icon is also useful when you’ve to switch between different network connections. You just click on this icon and connect to the network of your wish.

Now consider a scenario in which the network icon is missing from taskbar. In the absence of this icon, you’ve to go to Settings app > Network & Internet section, each time to manage networking your system. Obviously, this would be quite tedious to follow and hence there becomes crucial need to restore the missing network icon.

FIX Network Icon Missing From Windows 10 Taskbar

Below mentioned steps will help you recover the missing network icon in Windows 10.

FIX: Network Icon Missing From Windows 10 Taskbar

WAY 1 – Via Settings App

1. Right click Start Button or press W8K + X keys and select Settings.

2. In the Settings app, navigate to Personalization > Taskbar.

3. Moving on, under Taskbar, click Turn system icons on or Off link.

FIX Network Icon Missing From Windows 10 Taskbar

4. Then under Turn system icons on or Off, make sure Network option is turned On.

FIX Network Icon Missing From Windows 10 Taskbar

This action should restore network icon back on the taskbar. If it doesn’t, go ahead for FIX 2 mentioned below.

FIX 2 – Via Registry

Registry Disclaimer: The further steps will involve registry manipulation. Making mistakes while manipulating registry could affect your system adversely. So be careful while editing registry entries and create a System Restore point first.

1. Press W8K + R and put regedit in Run dialog box to open Registry Editor (if you’re not familiar with Registry Editor, then click here). Click OK.

Windows 10 Registry Editor

2. In left pane of Registry Editor window, navigate to following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

FIX Network Icon Missing From Windows 10 Taskbar

3. Now in the right pane of Explorer registry key, you must find HideSCANetwork named registry DWORD (REG_DWORD) which is set to 1. This is the root cause of the problem and is main culprit for missing network icon case. So double click on this registry DWORD to modify its Value data:

FIX Network Icon Missing From Windows 10 Taskbar

4. Finally, set the Value data to 0 and click OK. If you like, you can directly delete this registry DWORD as well. Both of these operations should restore the network icon on taskbar. Close Registry Editor and reboot to make changes effective.

After restarting your machine, network icon will no longer be missing:

FIX Network Icon Missing From Windows 10 Taskbar

Checkout this video to illustrate this fix:

That’s it!

5 Comments

Add your comment

  • Bozer

    Hey,

    I do not have “Policies” and “Explorer” right after “CurrentVersion”.

    Please help.

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ You can create them manually, if they don’t exist 😊

  • Dhrumil Nayak

    Thanks man that really helped 👍

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad it helped 😎

  • Aryan Gupta

    Still not working…wifi icon is missing..why are you guys so careless fix this issue. Have i paid this much of money for this issue?

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